While I was busy with my fruity endeavors, a lot of things happened at school.
Let’s turn back time for two weeks. One evening I was coming back from the church. It was a little late. An old man at the church just wouldn’t stop talking and wouldn’t let me go. He was babbling on and on for hours about how exciting it was when he was younger and now everything just feels dull and all that shit; he even went on to claim he regretted not taking a major risk and instead played it safe; he regretted it to the point that he wanted me to take every decision seriously. Thanks to him, I was late and past my curfew.
I was probably going to be chewed on by the dorm keeper. That would have been fine.
But instead, I met someone or rather something on my way back. A being of darkness.
Cat.
Not just any cat.
A fucking black panther!
Giant Turquoise eyes. Majestic black fur and those tall ass legs.
Oh, I’m so dead.
Or so I thought but the cat wasn’t even remotely aggressive. It looked at me, tail all swirled up. I carefully passed by while it licked itself. Poor cat had a festering wound on its leg.
Some steps later I looked back and the thing was gone. Breathing a sigh of relief, I made it to the dorm and explained my situation to the guard. He let me in and promised not to tell the dorm keeper. But that hag still somehow found out and hammered me for an hour. I told her I met the Panther and nothing happened. She wasn’t really surprised. Apparently, that cat had been here for the last decade or so but never harmed anyone. It was infamous for stealing food though.
Gerar was right as was Shia. In hindsight at least.
I rested on my bed for an hour, thinking. Lately things were okay. But at this rate progress would eventually stagger. Although I didn’t really make much progress with the spear, I did get better at the bow. I remembered what Den taught me and as long as I focused and practiced, I got better albeit slowly. I couldn’t hold a candle to people who were gifted in archery but I was definitely getting better. But if I no longer had time to master one of the few things that I already knew, I was definitely going to fall far below average. Den said I had a head start and could use that to my advantage. I was the first son of a viscount here so that gave me the benefit of the doubt.
But eventually people would find out I was powerless. Eventually people would signal me out. And that would mean the end of me and everything we’d built. All our efforts would be for naught. And that was the last thing I wanted.
I have to find a way.
It wasn’t a month yet but I could always request some practical lessons on things. I was paying a hell of a lot of tuition, so the least the academy could do was teach me all sorts of things. Even if it meant I had a higher chance of being exposed, I just had to take a lot of risks and actually get better.
With that in mind, I went to the library for our cleaning session; I grabbed some quick dinner beforehand. It was too early to start cleaning, so I just helped some students find books.
“Umm… Sol?” a girl called me over. I had no idea how she knew my name or why she was addressing me like she knew me personally and stuff but she seemed to be wearing a blue outfit so she was a noble I suppose.
“Yes?” She dragged me over to the girl’s side and before long I was surrounded by girls. “How can I help you.” I spoke cautiously.
Five girls. All double my height.
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“We’re looking for this book,” the leader of the group gave me a paper. I looked at the title once and immediately knew why they were being shy.
I cleared my thought. “You’ll find this on the top floor, second shelf, very bottom; I doubt anyone would care but you can use the far left table on the third floor if you don’t want attention.”
“Thanks!”
The group left. Well, I suppose they’re at that age… grinning to myself I made my way out of the girls’ side only to find a group of boys obstructing my view this time. Teenage boys. I suppose they were also looking for some hot and steamy stuff. Too bad most romance or steamy books in this library were catered to the girls.
“Something wrong, guys?”
“What were you doing over there Mr. Barack?”
“Nothing much. They wanted to find a book.”
“I’m sure they could have just asked the librarian.”
“Well, I’m technically also a librarian.”
They ground their teeth, clearly not happy with my situation. Don’t even think about sending assassins boys. Heh.
“I see. They tend to get mad when you stay on the other side for too long.”
“Understood,” I said.
We all nodded and they stepped back. I really didn’t have any interest in these girls, so I didn’t understand why the boys were so jealous. If there was anyone, I was interested it was probably Miss Chamille and her big… ahem.
Leaving all that aside, I brought my focus back to my own book, the one about magic and spirits.
It had detailed information about spells and what spells could do. It also had detailed information on spirits and how to tame them even if you’d didn’t have much affinity. Kind of useless for me since I didn’t have any affinity. But I found that a little hard to believe, considering Sisna really liked me and Rexen seemed to be willing too. Then again, the lizard was merely in it for the meat and probably forced the contract. I felt a rather stinging sensation on my finger…. It subsided quickly but, so we’re totally connected… should have figured.
These days I’d been wearing gloves on that arm and had a bracelet over my contract spot. No one really bothered to even notice it, let alone ask about it so I nearly forget about that everyday… till I had to take a shower and stuff.
There were various types of magic. But magic was really rare among the Westerners. Southerners were a little more blessed but compared to demons and Merfolk, and even Demihumans, they weren’t anything special. One out of every 10,000 humans and 1 out of every 5,000 elves were magicians or rather had talent to be able to cast spell from one discipline. There were ten disciplines. The typical Fire, Earth, Water, Wind were the most common. Ice, Lightning, Holy, Shadow were rare and could only be wielded by beings with godly blood. But Poison and Void were even rarer. Of course, there was another one, Time Magic, only one individual in existence had been said to have that and he was the late Demon Lord Azmanthas. Apparently, dude was alive back when the demigods slayed the massive sea monster or something like that.
One magic in particular interested me. Void. Void magic allowed the user to summon monsters or weapons, store away stuff, and even hide away entirely in another dimension. It interested me the most.
Why? Because it had to do with pulling and putting things in another dimension. Aka, it confirmed my hunch of there were more than just this world and earth. Then again it was certainly possible that void magic only connected my world and this one. But I doubted that. I’d read about heroes summoning giant birds as rides, villains summoning big fat juicy metal boxes and all that good stuff. There were robots on earth and maybe the giant birds were just planes. But I really doubted that… mostly because that would have been hella anticlimactic but anyway, I read on. Wouldn’t teleportation also be possible? I didn’t see any mention of instant transportation though.
Void magic was one of the few magic, alongside Time and Holy magic where one needed innate knowledge about the art itself rather than just dumb luck of being born with talent. Doesn’t that mean I might be able to learn it? If it were that easy though, everyone would be learning the stuff. Knowledge about how this stuff worked wasn’t easy to come by. In order to learn void magic your best bet was to track down a master and become his disciple. There was only one void magician in the Western continent. And to become his disciple you needed to be royalty, and offer a massive, and I mean a massive amount of gold.
How I knew that? Well, a random Nisa showed up and bestowed the knowledge to me. What are you, my tutorial?
Rolling my eyes, I kept reading. Nisa took a seat next to me and read her own stuff.
Innate knowledge? Maybe imagining what I wanted or where to find it and stuff? But even if I knew that, then what? If I didn’t have mana, the thing that made the spell work, how was I supposed to make it work? Use some gemstones with mana? Those are super expensive though. Then what else? But if mana was in the blood… maybe I could just drink some blood?
Yeah, maybe if I was a vampire that would have worked. Hmm… “What has mana and is a food?” I asked.
If there was mana in the food, maybe I could temporarily absorb some in my blood and use it?
“Maggots,” Nisa said. “Fields maggots are excellent for mana bait. You could easily catch big Manafish.”
Who with the what?